Universal Healthcare Cuts Abortion Rates

Much of the current debate about whether the Democrats will be able to muster the majority they need in the House, centers on abortion, and the number of pro-life Congressmen willing to stand with Bart Stupak (D-MI), who believes language he inserted in the House bill is stronger than that included in the Senate bill for prohibiting the use of federal funds for abortion.  T. R. Reid, writing in the Washington Post, makes the case that universal healthcare is one of the most powerful tools for reducing abortion rates. 

Reid shows that abortion rates are lower in developed countries that have universal health plans, than in the United States, which does not.  In Canada, the abortion rate is 15.2 per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44;  in Denmark, it's 14.3; Germany 7.8; Japan, 12.3; Britain, 17.0; and the United States, 20.8.

The abortion rate in the United States is 22.4 percent higher than it is in Britain, but in Britain, only eight percent of the population is Roman Catholic, compared to about 25 percent of the United States' population.  In Britain, abortion is legal, and is provided free, yet British women have far fewer abortions than do women in the United States. 

Reid quotes Roman Catholic Cardinal Basil Hume who said there were several reasons why British women have fewer abortions than U. S. women, but one important explanation was Britain's universal health care system.  Cardinal Hume said,

 "If that frightened, unemployed 19-year-old knows that she and her child will have access to medical care whenever it's needed, she's more likely to carry the baby to term.  Isn't it obvious?"

An unidentified young woman in Britain added another explanation.  

"If you're sexually active, the way to avoid abortion is to avoid pregnancy.  Most of us do that with an IUD or a diaphragm.  It means going to the doctor.  But that's easy here, because anybody can go to the doctor free."

Reid concludes his argument with these words:

"When I studied health-care systems overseas in research for The Health of America:  A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care, I asked health ministers, doctors, economists and others in all the rich countries why their nations decided to provide health care for everybody. The answers were medical (universal care saves lives), economic (universal care is cheaper), political (the voters like it), religious (it's what Christ commanded) and moral (it's the right thing to do).  And in every country, people told me that universal health-care coverage is desirable because it reduces the rate of abortion.

"It's only in the United States that opponents of abortion are fighting against expanded health-care coverage -- a policy step that has been proved around the world to limit abortions."

The pro-life movement has been an important constituency of the Republican Party for generations.  But now the pro-life movement, in working to defeat health reform, is putting it's allegiance to the Republican Party's positions ahead of its allegiance to life.